Opinion

Jim Gibney: Reconciliation and dialogue don't weaken united Ireland aspirations

Gestures such as meeting the queen were well received by unionists but did not diminish Martin McGuinness's desire for a united Ireland. Picture by Aaron McCracken/Harrisons
Gestures such as meeting the queen were well received by unionists but did not diminish Martin McGuinness's desire for a united Ireland. Picture by Aaron McCracken/Harrisons Gestures such as meeting the queen were well received by unionists but did not diminish Martin McGuinness's desire for a united Ireland. Picture by Aaron McCracken/Harrisons

JUST before Christmas I listened to Roy Garland speaking at Sinn Fein's Slógadh - its annual Irish language conference.

Roy was speaking to two generations of republicans: those of his own age and time, and those who grew up or were born after the IRA's ceasefire in 1994. Most of the audience were Irish language speakers and activists.

With Tom Hartley I first met Roy in the early 1990s when Sinn Féin was privately, almost secretly, meeting unionists and Protestants as part of its reconciliation engagement with unionists.

He was among a very small, but nonetheless influential group of unionists - clerical and lay - who met republicans and provided a valuable insight into the unionist community which contributed to the emerging peace process.

Roy's family's roots stretch back for centuries in Ireland, beyond the plantation.

He is very proud of this and of the English and later unionist influences on his family.

I have heard Roy speak many times. He weaves his family's history in and out of his remarks.

Ireland is Roy's home. He knows no other. And he is very comfortable with his sense of place and the Irish, English and unionist influences that root him here.

He spoke on a familiar theme of his: the fear unionists have of being "overwhelmed" as a minority in a united Ireland.

At the time of the Anglo-Irish Agreement signed by Margaret Thatcher and Taoiseach Garret FitzGerald, in 1985, the late MP for Upper Bann, Harold McCusker, said its impact had placed unionists on the "window ledge of the union".

Listening to Roy I thought of this remark and the title of two books about unionists, A Precarious Belonging by the former Presbyterian Moderator John Dunlop and an Unsettled People by the journalist Susan McKay.

Roy said that a senior republican had told him that in a united Ireland there would be a government in the north and a link with Britain.

If this is true, he said, then Sinn Féin should publicly tell this to unionists.

Martin McGuinness, perhaps more than any other republican, knew how 'unsettled' unionists are and how 'precarious' their belonging.

His position as deputy first minister gave him a special relationship, not just with unionist parties, but with unionist people.

And his gestures towards unionists - however abused they were by unionist parties - were the right thing to do and were well received by ordinary unionist people, to a point where Martin was popularly acclaimed among them.

This acclaim did not diminish Martin's republican aspiration to a united Ireland. It spoke to the importance he and Sinn Féin place on reconciliation with unionists and the need for dialogue with all levels and sectors of unionist society, especially beyond unionist parties.

The importance of that direct approach was evident at Queen's University a few weeks ago, when over 60 members of unionist civic society, of all shades of opinion, including loyalists, met with over 20 republican activists from different levels of Sinn Fein from across the north.

The event, jointly organised by Sinn Féin's national chairperson Declan Kearney and the academic Pete Shirlow, generationally reflected the make-up of the audience Roy Garland spoke to. It was the third such event in recent years.

Some in the audience, like Harold Good and John Dunlop, played crucial roles in convincing republicans on the need for a ceasefire and others like Peter Sheridan, a former senior member of the RUC and now chief executive of Co-operation Ireland, work daily on island-wide reconciliatory initiatives.

James Wilson and John Brewer set the scene for the discussion: Wilson explored the movement of people in and out of Ireland over a millennia and Brewer examined the failure of institutional Churches to build reconciliation.

Three of the people at my table were under 30, a fourth under 50 was a Presbyterian lay-theologian, who was born, grew up in and lives in the south of Ireland.

The discussion around the table was as stimulating and thought-provoking as the meetings I attended with Tom Hartley in the early nineties.

Republicans learned a lot then about unionist attitudes and vice versa.

The Queen's University meeting was not dealing with matters of life and death, as the meetings did in the early nineties, but it is every bit as important.

It is every bit important because it is about the future.